Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

critical thinking and problem solving rather than the mastery of specific subject
material (Shagdar, 2006). Various foundations and initiatives have spent vast
sums introducing ‘interactive teaching methods’, ‘participatory teaching’,
‘active learning methods’, ‘creative thinking’ and ‘critical thinking’, and human
rights and civic education throughout Central Asia, with perhaps the largest
impact in Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan (DeYoung, 2006; Steiner-Khamsi
and Stolpe, 2006).
In Mongolia, education reforms have been initiated by nearly every new
administration following four-yearly parliamentary elections. The early period of
post-socialist education reform is described by local researchers as a period of
‘confusing and unconscious imitation of others’ (Kaye et al., 2017). Three rounds
of curriculum reform have taken place in Mongolia since 2002. A new Law on
Education was approved by the Mongolian Parliament in 2002 and a number of
changes were made to the Education Law for Primary and Secondary Education.
Schooling was reorganised into an 11-year system from 2005. The development of
new set of State Education Standards (SES), introduced in 2004, was intended to
replace a previous curriculum, developed in 1997, which was essentially contentdriven.
The 2004 SES sought to promote a skills-based curriculum, emphasising
student-centred methodologies. It espoused new concepts such as lifelong
education, open curriculum and student assessment standards, while UNESCO’s
four pillars of learning were cited by local educators and researchers as central to
their overarching framework (Nookoo, 2016). In 2006, the government approved
the Master Plan for the Development of Mongolian Education 2006-2015,
which aimed to move to a 12-year system in 2008. Major modifications were
made to the SES in 2007, 2010 and 2011, with the stated intention of improving
implementation and outcomes. To support implementation of the SES, the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has organised a nation-wide project on
student-centred teaching methods since 2006.
In Kyrgyzstan, substantial impetus for curriculum reform at the policy level
came in response to what were seen as the dismal results of the country’s first
participation in PISA in 2006, when it placed last among the 57 participating
countries and economies. This was interpreted as indicating a need to align
school curricula and educational institutions with international standards. The
PISA results were used by the Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) to
legitimate reform and gain donor support. Since 2006, the Soros Foundation-
Kyrgyzstan has provided technical and methodological assistance to efforts to
promote a competence-based approach, and to establish (in 2009) a new National
Framework Curriculum for Secondary Education (Soros Foundation-Kyrgyzstan,
2014). This national standards document introduced a new framework for shaping
the content of ‘outcomes-based education’, and the development of a new
competency-based curriculum has subsequently proceeded with assistance from
international donors such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank
(Kyrgyzstan, 2012a). PISA results in 2009 indicated little change since 2006, a
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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